Free/open "this site has gone dark to fight SOPA" site template

Zachary sez, "I needed someplace to vent my frustration with SOPA
between calls to my Congress members. I created a homepage design
option for people who want to take their sites dark on January 18.
It's public domain and on github so people can fork it."

Nice. The only thing I object to would be the suggestion that the “vast majority of Americans” are opposed to SOPA/PIPA. The truth is that the vast majority of Americans have probably never even heard of it and don’t know anything about what’s at stake.

Certainly something one can hope will change on Wednesday. If only Facebook, Google, et al. would shut down as well. Then shit really would hit the fan.

It sure has been a good illustration of the elite in power in America. The overwhelming majority of our citizens is against this piece of shit legislative act and we have voiced it. They just ignore their entire constituency and do what they think is best for them. It sure pisses me off. So frustratingly unjust. It really starts to eat away at me.

“The federal government is trying to pass legislation that could censor or take down internet sites without a proper legal process to first prove fault; without such legal process internet sites could be shut down by private companies for any reason they make up. Two bills currently in congress are SOPA (Stop On-line Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are attempting to circumvent the legal process and others are being drafted. Please contact your members of Congress and Senate to urge to protect sites from allowing such actions to be done without proper legal oversight.”

Something like that. I just know once these are taken off it will start again with some other fancy acronym bill.

Given how much is at stake and who the coalition is, I’m disappointed by the landing page they have. The first action they ask you to take (and therefore one they will get far the most of is) to sign up for their email list. You actually have to scroll down to find the contact-your-representative page, which is not in the navigation. And it doesn’t give the congressional switchboard number or an interface to get your representatives’ phone numbers.

I don’t know what you people are worried about. SOPA and PIPA are merely show votes so that people in Congress can continue to earn big contributions from big media. There is NO WAY this gets signed by President Obama.

It’s all a game that is designed for the biggest payday legislators can get.

Just like there was NO WAY Obama would sign those other bills, right? Besides, it’s not just about our current sitting President. It’s about setting a precedent and sending a message to our politicians. It’s about boycotting those companies which support these bills.

The House shelved SOPA, but PIPA is still going through the Senate. Better squash that out as well, before declaring victory. Even better, it would be nice to keep the momentum going and propose a strong anti-censorship law, to push the Overton window back.

Your comments keep going to the spam bin, probably because of the repetitiveness of the address. But when you keep making the comment over and over, it makes the filter even more convinced that you’re a spammer.

Yet we need a version that works on IE to hit the folk that randomly brows while at work when work won’t allow another browser, or libraries that have defaulted to IE (like the one nearest me.)

IE is behind the times, but we can’t just laugh and disregard it here. Those users equel voices. To laugh and say that ‘Oh our message wont’ get to them because they’re too stupid to use a proper browser.’ is pure utter nonsense and on the same order as Lamar Smith’s ‘Oh they’re just a vocal minority, we can ignore them.’